Aboriginal Education

We were very fortunate to have a visit from Dallas Gus today.  Dallas came and taught us all about his culture, Coast Salish and Squamish Nation.  

He started by rubbing his drum to warm it up to get it ready for playing.

He told us that his people are "people of the sea" and taught us about canoes....

and salmon and the importance of the sea and all that it provides.  

He told us why cedar is and was used by the Coast Salish people.  It is easy to carve and weave and it doesn't decay in the rain like other wood.  He explained that totems were placed outside family homes to show which clans lived in the house.  The clans are represented by animals.

He introduced us to the Thunderbird, a mythical creature, and talked about its importance.

Here, he is drawing a thunderbird and explaining how it is different from an eagle.

He split our class into three groups, each group was a different animal.  Here, he's showing us how to dance like an orca whale.

This is how the Eagle group will dance.

This is how the wolf group will dance.

Then he sang a song and invited each group to dance around the carpet.  I didn't manage to take a photo of the orca group because I was dancing too.

Here are the eagles.

Here are the wolves.

And now, everyone was invited to dance at the end of the song.

Then we heard the story of how the raven stole the sun.

Here, the children in the story tricked the trickster (the raven) and managed to release the sun from the box.

Finally, we listened to one more song.

During the song, the drumming stops from time to time and we raised our hands up and said "o siem"...another way to say thank you.